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Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Metascore
44 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 37 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 37
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 37
  3. Negative: 11 out of 37
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  1. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    80
    If you liked "Love, Actually," you'll love this too, another small jewel in the crown of unabashedly commercial, cheerfully middlebrow, eminently exportable British fluff.
  2. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    A jolly movie and I smiled pretty much all the way through, but it doesn't shift into high with a solid thunk the way "Bridget Jones' Diary" did.
  3. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Carina Chocano
    70
    At its best at its most absurd.
  4. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    67
    A triumph of performance, production, and adaptation over the empty-calorie dither of its source material.
  5. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: M. E. Russell
    67
    The bright spot, again, is Grant.
  6. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Allison Benedikt
    63
    The trouble with Bridget redux is also simple: Thai jail.
  7. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    63
    Doesn't have nearly enough Hugh Grant and is a little short on laughs, but it gets by on Renée Zellweger's charms.
  8. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    63
    The Bridget Jones characters are worth revisiting. It's just too bad the story that connects them in The Edge of Reason is less fresh and clever than its predecessor.
  9. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    63
    Too bad Kidron, Fielding and company pay only cafe lip service to satire.
  10. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Jessica Winter
    60
    Improbably, the sequel only ups the ante on its predecessor's comedy-of-embarrassment quotient.
  11. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    60
    We forgive Bridget the movie its obvious flaws because of its equally inescapable charm.
  12. Variety
    Reviewed by: Derek Elley
    60
    Second time round, Bridget is still fat, funny and endearing -- but "all a bit, um, familiar, actually."
  13. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Teresa Wiltz
    60
    Yes, it is v. funny. It's just not v. clever. And clever is what made the original Bridget Jones movie such a hoot.
  14. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    60
    Carefully re-creates the first movie's lightweight romance and mildly cheeky gender comedy.
  15. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    50
    Begins by repeating many gags from the previous film. Only now they feel lame and routine.
  16. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    50
    The movie catches occasional fire when Bridget suddenly says what's really on her mind. The rest is silliness.
  17. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Connie Ogle
    50
    An uninspired, sporadically funny adaptation that falls short of the book's winsome, frisky chaos.
  18. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    50
    Cute, cloying and catastrophically predictable.
  19. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    50
    The director, Beeban Kidron, handles the proceedings with an episodic aimlessness on par with Bridget's.
  20. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    50
    Die-hard fans are advised to wait for the video. Everyone else would be better off pretending that this movie doesn't exist. In the long run, you'll have a higher opinion of everyone involved.
  21. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Sara Brady
    50
    Bloated with too many pratfalls yet too little plot, and neutered of its most viciously hysterical moments.
  22. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Leah McLaren
    50
    Rather than being one of us, this stumpy-legged dingbat is a realization of our worst social fears. Before we were laughing with her, and now we're laughing at her.
  23. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marrit Ingman
    50
    Final verdict: Cast is excellent; movie is OK; men and women are soooo different.
  24. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    50
    In case you were holding your breath, Renée Zellweger's Bridget Jones is still sweetly earnest, chronically overweight and swinging once again from lovestruck to lovelorn.
    All this critic's reviews
  25. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    40
    Labored and dispiriting.
  26. Empire
    Reviewed by: Caroline Westbrook
    40
    For the most part, Edge Of Reason is as saggy and well-worn as Bridget's big knickers.
  27. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    38
    Takes the worst and most annoying elements of the first film and treats them like grand assets.
  28. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    38
    This picture has an ugly habit of humiliating Bridget, which "Diary" did not.
  29. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Pete Vonder Haar
    30
    Audiences enjoyed the original “Bridget Jones” because it hit close to home...But the sequel has about as much emotional depth as a sitcom
  30. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Charles Taylor
    30
    So clumsy and crass that it makes you doubt the pleasure of the first movie.
  31. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    30
    When a sequel has to hit the reset button and take all its characters back to where they started, it probably didn't need to be made.
  32. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Robert Wilonsky
    30
    Has all the charm of a canceled CBS sitcom.
  33. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    30
    One singularly unbecoming character, who should, by rights, forever remain a "singleton."
  34. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    25
    Is it the clumsy script or the switch in directors -- Beeban Kidron in for Sharon Maguire -- that has sucked out the charm of the original and replaced it with crude pratfalls and enough shag gags to stuff the next three Austin Powers movies?
  35. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    25
    A great role becomes an unenviable chore, in which a superb comic actress finds herself trying to sell a series of unfunny comic situations by mugging and pushing with all her might. It's an unflattering spectacle for all concerned.
  36. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    25
    Absurdly over the top and not especially funny.
  37. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    20
    Man, does this one make the first movie look like a masterpiece. What was Renée Zellweger thinking? It can't have been fun to put on all that weight, especially for a film as ghastly as this.
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
4.6 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 31 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 24
  3. Negative: 12 out of 24
  1. RegOz
    0
    Uttterly stupid! It was a real disappointment! ...so now, Bridget is the girl that everybody loves, hot, successful, smar guys and also intelligent, gorgeous, successful lesbians? Really? I mean....should I say much more? I have no intentions to watch it never again! To me is a real 0 and not because it is a sequel- I am always tolerant with sequels-but because the whole story is silly, ridiculously boring, and feels forced! Bridget is worse than ever! Unfortunatley they have destroyed all the attractiveness that Hugh Grant's character used to have, they made him little less than evil...and he was the best character of the first movie! If you can avoid watching it, but if you are curious watch it, and if you like it-I don't think you will- then good on you!… Full Review »
  2. MarkB.
    3
    A failed attempt to recreate the fizz of 2000's charming and entertaining Bridget Jones' Diary that follows the all-too-typically-followed path also trodden by such sequels as Barbershop 2: Back in Business and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde: let's give 'em More Of The Same, only to prove again that more is less. Unlike the Reese Witherspoon and Ice Cube second go-rounds, you can't totally make the criticism that Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is an UNNECESSARY sequel; Helen Fielding, the author of the book on which the original was baseddid indeed write a followup, but the adapters seemed about as interested in following Fielding's plotline as they were in following that of James Joyce's Ulysses. Even so, the original ended perfectly and organically with insecure-in-love-work-and-everything-else Bridget dumping Mr. Wrong, embracing Mr. Right and finding True Love At Last. As played so endearingly by Renee Zellweger in the original, Bridget (a British lass whose rough American equivalent is the comic strip character Cathy) was both hilariouly awkward AND tremendously empathy-inducing; you laughed at her multiple faux pas but also felt hugely protective of her and had a real rooting interest in her well-being. Well, good-bye to all that: it's not Renee's fault; she's still an excellent actress and terrific farceur who's doing what the script tells her to--but Bridget in the sequel has gone from appealingly vulnerable to so ridiculously insecure and needy, endlessly embarrassing and humiliating boyfriend Mark (Colin Firth) that I found myself constantly wondering something that was the furthest thing from my mind while watching the original: namely, "Why in God's name doesn't he toss this shrill Looney Tune out on her ear and change all the locks?"… Full Review »
  3. matta.
    8
    Cannot understand why the critics were so harsh with this. Just as good as the first one. There are some seriously classic scenes here and although Hugh Grant's limited screen time was unfortunate, it was still a very funny, romantic movie.… Full Review »
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